


Once

by Ithil



Category: DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Sketches, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 14:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8147467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithil/pseuds/Ithil
Summary: Once, in another timeline, M'gann didn't mindblast members of her own team before taking Psimon down.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _Young Justice_ is the property of DC Entertainment.
> 
> The first season of YJ tended to play around with time. Events would be skipped and revealed to the audience later (unlike in most shows, in which the audience knows things that the characters do not). "Image" left me wondering what would have happened if Meg hadn't mindzapped the boys before ripping Psimon's brain out through his amygdala.

Once, in another timeline, she doesn’t turn on her own teammates. Maybe she’s more afraid of whatever Psimon has planned for her next than of her real reflection in their eyes. Maybe she just thinks she’d get caught. Maybe it just took them two minutes longer to get to her.  


Either way, by the time the psychic hits the floor, eyes dead and empty, there are already footsteps heading toward her. Robin, Flash and Superboy rush in, and no way does anyone miss the eight-foot white skullspider standing in a shredded pile of what used to be M’gann’s clothes.  


Robin’s quick on the uptake, but his reflexes are quicker, dropping him into a crouch, all utility. Kid Flash would already be moving but he’s too stunned. It kind of looks like Psimon, all white and wrong with ropes of pink tendon like loops of exposed brain, so his mouth is faster than the rest of him.  


“What the hell is _that?!_ Where’s M’gann?”  


And she knows her hard breathing must sound like a snarl, but the air here is too thick and the gravity’s too hard and someone just reached inside her and _shut part of her off_ and it took all she had to get him to _stop_ , but she can't take her eyes off the birdarang that practically jumped into Robin’s hand, the narrowed look behind the holes in his mask, like he doesn’t know what he’s seeing.  


She doesn’t register the hand clamped around his wrist.  


The speed might not be on Superman’s level, but it’s enough.  


“Superboy, what are you doing? C’mon, that hurts.” Even surprised, Robin’s too much a professional to slip up and use his street name in the field.  


Superboy’s never raised a hand to Robin outside of the training ring, not when he was in his right mind, and so help her but M’gann thinks Psimon’s got control of him, makes things worse by moving toward the warlock in what must look like a lurch, a lunge, but no, he’s still inert and drooling, all the ligaments in his psyche blown.  


“You two get Psimon,” Superboy says slowly. “I’ll ...find M’gann.”  


“You’ll _find_ M’gann?!” one of Wally’s hands jabs toward her palm-up, “What about the giant—” Then his head turns sideways. Then his shoulders drop to his sides. “Wait...”  


And Robin blinks, and his fingers loosen around the black metal. Superboy lets go.  


_Miss M? Is that you?_  


Answering would confirm it. Answer him and he’d know; they’d all _know_. And the words would sound too harsh without lips over her mouth. She hadn’t wanted to bare her teeth.  


So M’gann flinches when Robin snaps his eyes away but it’s only the rib-deep backstage reflex. If her costume is not on her body, you don’t look, not at the fat lady, not the acrobats, not the freaks. _She_ shows the audience what she wants them to see, and this isn’t M’gann’s act.  


“C’mon, KF...” and Robin and Wally are out of the room, dragging Psimon like a sack of potatoes with Wally going “Wait.. are you telling me _that’s_ —”  


And Connor’s not Robin. He looks. Because even though he _knew_ , that’s not the same as seeing. And biology doesn’t pull its punches, M’gann is not beautiful to anyone with human sensibilities, which Connor is slowly figuring out that he has.  


_You okay?_  


_Connor..?_  


“You’re a shapeshifter. We all knew that this morning.”  


M’gann’s lungs expand—sideways and through the air sacs behind her neck, not all around the chest like a green Martian. Flapper. Belch-bellow. Worse names.  


And there isn’t enough surprise in his mind. “But ...you knew?”  


“Since the mindmeld the first time we were in Bialya.” Because if you think being without your skin was bad, try being without your mind.  


“But don’t I look—”  


“—Alien?”  


Connor shrugs. He knows “I don’t care” is the wrong thing to say but not much else. Even though he knows the names of things, can recite the history, population, principal exports and implications for U.S. and Cadmus interests of every country on a dime, he doesn’t have a word for this feeling. He's never had to figure out what his own thoughts meant before.  


Because she doesn’t look like a _girl_ , not smiles and eyelashes and soft parts right where they should be. It’s more like looking at Wolf, but he doesn’t think she wants to hear that.  


Because hell yeah she looks alien.  


She look strong.  


She looks fierce.  


She looks like she could do anything anywhere to anyone she wanted, like somewhere far away she’s got a pack of her own kind a million strong but for some reason she’s still here and he’s still not sure he won’t open his eyes one morning and find nothing but a set of footprints leading away. It’s like the one where he wakes up back in the pod.  


So Connor touches one hand to what he’s pretty sure is her elbow and her skin doesn’t feel like skin but not like a frog’s slime or a mantis’ shell. _Lithobates catesbeiana_. Mantidae. Like ...the softer scales on a snake’s stomach, _Leiopython albertisii_. He's never touched an armadillo, and the G-gnomes didn't program him with that sensation.  


She looks like ...like she’s supposed to look that way, all one piece or something, he thinks as she picks up the shreds of bio-fabric, knits them back together like a Home Ec project, darkens her skin and drops red from her scalp. The cute little cookie-baking green girl was ...a pod, a round thing to hold the weapon in.  


Connor doesn’t have to fake the smile.  


“You don’t have to wear a mask with me,” he said.  


The choice of form is deliberate, but once she's in it, it's cellular. The muscles in her face move without her telling them to: This whole time he hasn’t looked away, not once.  


M’gann slips inside his arms, holding on like she’ll never have to think about what the League or Artemis will say when Wally opens his big mouth or how she’s going to destroy those recordings. For now, it’s enough that it hadn't cost her the boy who let her name him after a stupid girlhood hope.  


Connor’s eyes find the place where Psimon hit the floor. He always knew she was powerful, but Psimon went from a full-fledged threat to suddenly leaking. He wonders if it's still the Cadmus programming, telling him to be like Superman. because even though he’ll never admit it, it matters to him that Superman wouldn’t have liked her breaking Psimon. Superman would have found a way to save everyone, even the enemy.  


Even the ones who could reach inside you and steal the actual moon, what night air really felt like, your friends, your name, and every step you ever took away from the pod and make you an _it_.  


The bad guy had it coming, Connor decides, just this once.  


“Let’s get back to the others.”  


And they go.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Dick Grayson would have folded his arms and acted like he was more upset about being named after a sitcom character. Some romantic hero would have handed M'gann a pink-and-white rhododendron and say "I just thought it was pretty." Connor is not going to think in those terms.


End file.
